How does one find out what is taking up space in the iCloud drive on an iPhone?

Question

How does one find out what is taking up space in the iCloud drive on an iPhone?

I have 3 GB of documents and data in my iCloud drive online (Settings/Apple ID/iCloud). My iCloud drive on the iPhone (Settings/General/iPhone Storage/iCloud Drive) on the other hand has 8.24 GB of documents and data. How is that difference possible?

How can I see on the iPhone what is taking up the 8.24 GB of space?

I checked under Files/iCloud drive. There it says I have 2 GB on the iPhone.

So, what is the remaining 6.24 GB? And where is it?

Posted on Feb 23, 2022 10:27 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Detlef Schmitt Author

Level 2

325 points

Feb 27, 2022 10:10 PM in response to ryane77

Conclusion:

1. In the Cloud I have about 865 MB in the iCloud Drive.

2. By checking the iCloud Drive in the Files app I estimated the local content in the iCloud Drive to be about 100 MB.

3. The iCloud Drive indicator under Settings/General/iPhone Storage told me that the local iCloud Drive uses about 8.2 GB.

3. Conclusion: there is a huge difference between what the Files app (~100 MB) and what the iCloud Drive storage indicator (~8.2 GB) tells me to be stored locally in the iCloud Drive.

4. Solution offered by Apple: under Settings/Apple ID/iCloud turn the iCloud Drive temporarily off.

5. Result: This method reset the iCloud Drive storage indicator and freed up 8 GB of storage space.

Interpretation:

An iOS bug caused the iCloud Drive storage indicator to be way off. One possible explanation is that the iCloud Drive storage indicator failed to recalculate the disk usage after document files had been deleted from the iCloud Drive on the iPhone. By estimating the turnover of files in the local iCloud drive I find it possible that the iCloud Drive storage indicator wasn’t updated after document files were deleted for the entire usage time of the iPhone XS (~3.5 years).

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Answer 2

karina184

Community Specialist

Feb 25, 2022 8:31 AM in response to Detlef Schmitt

Detlef Schmitt,

Thanks for all the clarity provided. It looks and sounds like you've downloaded a lot of iCloud Drive files for local use and need the downloads removed so they're taking up less space on your iPhone storage. To do so, simply turn off iCloud Drive under Settings > [your name] > iCloud and this should remove any local downloads from iCloud Drive.

Moving forward, any files you've recently accessed or chosen to download from iCloud Drive will be stored locally, so keep that in mind when reviewing these details in the future.

For more details on managing files in iCloud Drive, please review: Access and manage your files in iCloud Drive

We hope this clears things up for you and helps you better understand why you're likely seeing what you're seeing and how best to manage it.

Take care!

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Answer 3

ryane77

Community Specialist

Feb 27, 2022 8:07 AM in response to Detlef Schmitt

Detlef Schmitt,

You're welcome! We're happy to hear that helped out. To clarify though, you didn't actually delete anything from your iCloud Drive. You only deleted the locally downloaded version of these files. The files themself are still available in iCloud Drive, so there's no need to worry about data loss here and the behavior described is expected.

Cheers!

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Answer 4

Feb 24, 2022 4:48 PM in response to Detlef Schmitt

Hey Detlef Schmitt,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We understand you're needing help managing your iCloud storage, specifically the documents and data. We'd be happy to help out.

We'd suggest taking a look at the 'Delete folders or files in iCloud Drive' section of Manage your iCloud storage to best manage the documents currently stored in iCloud.

You'll also find more information on the differences between your local storage and iCloud storage and how best to free up space on them here: What's the difference between device storage and iCloud storage?

We hope this information helps you out.

Take care!

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Answer 5

Feb 24, 2022 5:35 PM in response to Nicholas_B2

Hello Nicholas,

thanks for your reply. You did not tell me anything new. I am an experienced iPhone user. I have been using Apple products since 1990. I am also a programmer. However, I do not understand everything.

To illustrate my problem see attached screenshots. As you can see I have 865 MB on the iCloud Drive in the iCloud (iCloud Storage). On the other hand, in the iCloud Drive on the iPhone (iPhone Storage), I have 8 GB.

It appears that there are 2 iCloud drives. Can you explain this? In addition, where can I see the details about the 8GB? The iCloud Drive in the Files app gives me information about the files I that have stored in the iCloud, but not on the iPhone.

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Answer 6

Feb 26, 2022 7:01 PM in response to karina184

Thank you for the suggestion. This method did delete the 8 GB in the iPhone Storage/iCloud Drive.

However, I find this solution somewhat unsatisfying, because now I don't know what I deleted.

I think this calls for some improvement in the iOS.

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How does one find out what is taking up space in the iCloud drive on an iPhone?

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